Jason showed Disqus to me a few weeks back, and I seriously considered using it — until I figured out that you don’t own your comments anymore. One of the main points of cultivating comments is to have valuable content added to your site, and with Disqus, it’s added to their site.
Scoble has a demo of the system (and fawns a bit over it) at Scobelizer.
Here’s my question, where does Google see the comment appear first? If it’s on the Disqus site, that means your blog is now being populated with “duplicate” content (or no content at all.) Scary.
Jason just tested this, see the screen shot below. This is a search for a comment made on “his” blog. Google sure doesn’t see it as a being linked to his content. This makes Disqus a total non-starter IMHO.
I can understand why the Typepad crowd might like this, as they aren’t used to totally owning their content, and are generally feature-constrained. I’m surprised Fred Wilson doesn’t care about the platform and SEO ramifications though.
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Daniel Ha 12.11.07 at 9:08 pm
Hi Steve,
Daniel from Disqus here… Thanks for taking a look. The point you bring up is a concern we’ve heard before and it’s completely understandable.
We’ve given this a lot of thought and respecting others’ content is very important to us. We have a different plugins available for those who self-host their blogs (WordPress, MovableType) which makes use of our API rather than a JavaScript include. This makes comments SEO-friendly.
Something we’ve been working on is data migration and synchronization. Right now, you can export your comments from Disqus to back up or move elsewhere. In the near future, we’ll release our seamless importing and database sync, allowing bloggers to have as much control as they want.
There’s some work to do. We’ve only been in open beta for about a month and we have big plans on the roadmap. The idea is to enhance web discussion for both site-owners and commenters, and, most importantly, to not take anything away.
Thanks again for the feedback.
Steve Broback 12.12.07 at 12:01 pm
Daniel: Thanks for posting some clarification. With the WP plugin which of the following happens?
1) Comment appears in Google searches as appearing only in the Disqus domain.
2) Comment appears in Google searches as appearing only in the blogger’s domain.
3) Comments appear in Google searches in both domains simultaneously.
4) Comments appear in Google searches in both eventually, but in Disqus first.
5) Comments appear in Google searches in both eventually, but in blog first.
Daniel Ha 12.13.07 at 3:21 am
Steve,
There are two WP plugins available. One that uses JavaScript and one that uses our API.
For the former, Google does not properly index JavaScript includes, so we provide it from our domain. There is always a link back to the original site.
For the latter, it will show up for the Blogger’s domain. We’re doing few things to address duplicate indexing.
Steve Broback 12.13.07 at 7:59 pm
Tech For Novices: I did read your post…
Daniel: Thanks for the update — sounds like for the JavaScript version the answer is 1 in my list(?) The version that uses your API it’s 2? Are both versions shipping now? Appreciate the additional info.